Book of the Week: A Pick by Maggie Blanchard

Maggie Blanchard picks The Power of Nature by Lori Nix from Wienand Verlag as Book of the Week.

"Lori Nix — The Power of Nature is a catalogue from the exhibition of the same name held at the Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau, Germany in 2015. The book contains two bodies of work, The City and Lost, but as both projects focus on the power of nature and the non-existence of mankind, having them together is not incongruous.
In The City, which makes up the bulk of the images, Nix depicts scenes from a world after some unknown disaster has left the earth free from people and in the process of reclaiming man-made structures. If you could imagine a future for the planet without people, and mentally sidestep the disaster required to make it that way, you could imagine, without judgment, the beauty of nature reclaiming a non-populated earth.

This is what Nix shows in dioramas she painstakingly constructs over a period of about seven months, and when completed, photographs from a single perspective with an 8 x 10 camera. Each photograph contains exquisite detail, color and lighting, which conjure a mix of emotion from elation to dread.

As the book was produced by a museum, it has a wealth of supporting information, essays and contributions, including questions answered by Nix. Together the writing places Nix’s work in the context of art and thinking about the apocalypse and the anthropocene.

When answering a question about her influences, Nix writes 'Eighteenth century philosophers such as Burke and Kant wrote of phenomena that could excite sublime feelings when considering natural settings, dangerous situations, the unknown, and anything else that can threaten us or our belief that we live in a friendly and predictable universe that is under our control.'

I have been nothing less than an enthusiastic fan of Nix’s photographs for many years and am thrilled to poses and revisit her work in the pages of a book." —Maggie Blanchard

Maggie Blanchard is Director of Twin Palms Publishers. For over thirty years Twin Palms has published exceptional photography and art books with an emphasis on monographs. Each beautifully made book honors the original work while creating an object that has a life of its own. Maggie is also an educator who teaches in order to continue to learn.